The Guardian & the global problem of fake news
1) Read this Guardian feature - Fake news: an insidious trend that's fast becoming a global problem
2) What similarities do you notice between the different countries outlined in the article and their problems with fake news?
The countries that were involved in this article were Germany, France, Italy, China, Brazil, Australia, and India, all these countries have a problem with fake news and it is a growing problem, they are trying to find a way to tackle them but they are different strategy. The German political mainstream is getting increasingly nervous about the effect that the rise of fake news might have on federal elections next autumn. Fake news and Russian interference – either by influencing fake news sites, or by hacking or misinformation – are viewed as a serious threat to the democratic process, particularly since the US presidential elections. France has had a sharp increase in the readership of alternative, far-right sites, blogs and social media operations. Promoting views including anti-immigration, nativism and ultra-nationalism, these sites are run independently, rather than by a political party. But they feed into a mood of distrust of the traditional media, both on the far right and the far left.
With each of the stories that are boradcasted in each of the countries are fake news but audiences do not realise that they are, these stories have caused audiences to react in different ways but it has be done in a way to cause a lot of distribution within the days of political elections
3) Is fake news an inevitable consequence of the "culture of freedom and innovation" that the internet has brought with it? Is there a way to stop it?
In my opinion, i don't think there is a way to stop it because nobody can control audiences and what they write because it can be seen as taking away their freedom of speech. There is always going to be fake news told and braodcasted, this is because people want reactions or some audiences wouldn't question what they read so things will get posted anyway.Fake news can be created especially within the US presidential elections so that people could persuade a wider audience to believe what they want and to be influenced by their decisions, as some audiences are still seen as passive. People who post fake news know they will get people clicking on their sites, no matter what, it will still help them gain money through it - they don't actually care if audiences are reading the right or wrong information.
New York Times and the creation of fake news
1) Read this New York Times feature - Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’
2) Which fake news stories were particularly successful for Beqa Latsabidze, the 22-year-old student in Tbilisi, Georgia, who tried to make money from web articles on Trump?
So successful was the formula that others in Georgia and other faraway lands joined in, too, including Nika Kurdadze, a college acquaintance of Mr. Latsabidze’s who set up his own pro-Trump site, newsbreakshere.com. Its recent offerings included a fake report headlined: “Stop it Liberals…Hillary Lost the Popular Vote by Several Million. Here’s Why.” That story, like most of Mr. Latsabidze’s work, was pilfered from the web .A lot of that was conservative readers who see it picked up on other sites and believe it,” some didn't even read the actual article but they're just reacting to the headline.
3) How much can Facebook and Google be blamed for this global rise in fake news?
I think that Facebook and Google are to blame for this global rise in fake news. This is because they do notice that there is a lot of fake news being posted but yet they haven't tackled the issue, they should be able to monitor what their audiences (especially facebook) are posting up, and either take it down and give them a warning about posting fake news. They should be able to automatically notice fake news and prevent it from being posted up.These institutions are very big, they have the money and the knowledge to control this issue if they really wanted to.
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